Abstract
In this chapter we concentrate on methods of data collection; however, some consideration will be given to data analysis. When one decides on the methods of data collection, one is asking the following questions: What kind of information is being sought, from what sources, and under what circumstances? When one decides on the how to analyze the data, one is deciding how to make sense out of the data that has been collected. Methodology and theory are fundamental to the cognitive structure of any field of study (Creswell and Creswell 2018). Their nature and roles have generated a great deal of debate, both within the field of comparative education specifically and within academic community more generally. The purpose of this chapter is to examine how research strategies have evolved among comparative educators, who publish in research journals. The contextual backdrop for the discussion will be globalization, which has fundamentally ‘challenged the scope and nature of the field’ of comparative education (Crossley and Watson 2003). Whereas comparative education has defined itself as a field that focuses on national systems of education, globalization has multiplied the elements of a global culture while at the same time stimulating tremendous diversity at the local, community level (Zajda and Rust 2016a; Zajda 2020a). We do not attempt to assess here how globalization has defined comparative education methods, but to provide insight as to how comparative education research reflects or does not reflect harmony with globalization.
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Notes
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- 2.
Carlos Torres & Raymond A. Morrow (1995). Critical theory and education: From the Frankfurt School to Poststructuralism. Albany: SUNY Press.
- 3.
Because IJED began publication only in 1981, we were not able to include articles from that journal.
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Eric Hobsbawm, On History (New York: The New Press, 1997).
- 5.
Clifford Geertz, ‘Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective’, in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, ed. Clifford Geertz (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 167–70.
- 6.
The issue of incommensurability was first raised by Thomas Kuhn in reference to paradigms. Kuhn argued that a scientific revolution means one theory is replaced by another. Even though the new theory may use similar vocabulary, their meanings are changed to the point that people holding to one theory as apposed to the other are unable to communicate with each other.
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Zajda, J., Rust, V. (2021). Methods and Methodologies in Comparative Education. In: Globalisation and Comparative Education. Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-2054-8_4
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